When we titled the exhibition ‘Climate Positive’, we weren’t trying to sound optimistic. We were making a clear departure from the default language of crisis, harm reduction, or neutrality. We wanted to talk about regeneration. We wanted to ask: What does a net-positive impact really look like?
Looking back, I see how that decision shaped not only the exhibition but the months of work, relationships, and questions that built it. Climate Positive became less about answers and more about shifting the lens, from extraction to reciprocity, from reaction to imagination.
This wasn’t an art show. It was a systems inquiry. It looked at how we live, what we value, and what it takes to rebuild the broken links between nature, knowledge, and the way we live.
The fellowship that made it possible
The exhibition began with the ‘Creative Catalyst Fellowship’, a programme we launched through Good Life X in early 2024. We brought together ten practitioners from different creative disciplines across Sri Lanka, and paired them with scientists, conservationists, and systems thinkers.
What followed wasn’t a residency in the traditional sense. It was a lab for unlearning and reimagining. Fellows worked directly with soil, data, waste, and people. They spent time in forests with ecologists, on farms with seed guardians, and in labs with researchers. A few worked with plastics and industrial by-products to imagine new material futures.
The boundaries between disciplines quickly broke down. The work that emerged was not a polished output, it was an embodied inquiry.
Neither purely scientific nor purely conceptual, these expressions sat at the intersection of insight and emotion. They asked urgent questions about life on a planet and country in crisis.
The exhibition as catalyst
The exhibition marked the end of the fellowship, but not the end of the work. It offered the public a window into that process, into the research, the field immersion, and the slow transformation that occurred in each fellow.
Visitors encountered interactive installations, sound pieces, mixed media, research artefacts, and design prototypes. Some works invited participation. Others simply asked people to slow down and notice.
We explored themes like ecological restoration, interdependence, indigenous wisdom, climate resilience in agriculture, and wetland ecosystems. These weren’t abstract concepts, they were embedded in each piece through lived experience, conversations, and grounded research.
One thing became clear as we engaged with the hundreds that walked through on a daily basis into the gallery space: People don’t just need information about the climate emergency, they need connection. That’s what the exhibition gave them.
The funding collapse and what came after
In January, just months before the exhibition was set to open, the US government suspended foreign aid to Sri Lanka. As a result, the funding for the project stopped overnight.
We had a choice, cancel our plans or adapt. We chose to adapt.
We turned to the local network we had built, artists, scientists, conservationists, institutions, and friends. Their response was immediate and generous. They offered support not out of obligation, but because they saw the value in what we were building.
In hindsight, that crisis forced us to do what the exhibition was advocating: Take local ownership, act with transparency, and trust in relationships. Regeneration isn’t theoretical, it’s what happens when people decide to speak their truth, and continue to create even when the system doesn’t show up.
Creativity as critical infrastructure
For us at Good Life X, creativity is not decorative. It is not what you add at the end of a policy or a plan. It is a tool for thinking, for connecting, and for designing new systems.
The fellowship, and the exhibition, proved this. When creative people are given time, space, trust, and mentorship, they produce more than content. They produce insight. They translate data into stories, feelings into questions, and questions into possibility.
We saw how ethnobotanical knowledge, field research, and community memory could be woven into powerful, accessible forms. Not to simplify complexity, but to make it relatable. To bring it into the room.
Beyond the room
Climate Positive wasn’t just a showcase. It was a prototype for what transdisciplinary, regenerative work can look like in Sri Lanka and beyond. It showed how creative practice can intersect with science, policy, entrepreneurship, and community life.
The conversations it sparked, between artists and scientists, between industry and students, between local knowledge and institutional frameworks, felt essential. Many visitors left the exhibition unsettled, but also activated. They left thinking not just about the planet, but about their place in it.
That was always the point.
What endures
Since the exhibition, new collaborations have formed. Some of the works have evolved into ongoing projects. Others have travelled. The fellows continue to lead work across agriculture, materials, education, ecology, and design, bringing creativity into sectors that rarely make room for it.
For me, what endures most is the feeling of standing in that space. Of watching people pause. Hearing stories emerge in response. Climate Positive reminded us that we don’t need permission to build what doesn’t yet exist. We just need to start.
In a world that constantly rewards speed and scale, this was a project that chose depth, context, and trust. And it worked.
Final thoughts
Climate Positive was a risk. It asked people to engage differently, with the planet, with creativity, and with each other. It wasn’t designed to entertain or convince. It was designed to stir, to connect, and to shift.
In a time of compounding crises, we need spaces where knowledge meets care, where artists are treated as systems thinkers, and where ideas are allowed to breathe before they’re packaged into solutions.
Looking back, I see the real power was never in waiting for ideal conditions, it was in trusting our capacity to begin. We tapped into the abundance already within and around us, moved with agility, and created momentum. That is the essence of regeneration: Activating what we already carry to shape what’s yet to come.
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.)
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(The writer is the Founder Chair of Good Life X and Programme Director of the Creative Catalyst Fellowship.)